Sharing the joy of giving with my children at Christmas

As a mum to two young children, Christmas morning is pure joy – watching weeks of list-making, browsing, and gift-gathering come together as their faces light up with the thrill of “Santa’s been!”

But, as a member of the communications team at Mary’s Meals UK – where my job is to tell the stories of the children and families for whom our school meals are a lifeline – I know all too well that Christmas morning in their homes will be very different.

“Christmas is one of the most difficult days of our lives”, says Brendah, a mum of four in Zimbabwe. “The children will be demanding presents, but we cannot afford to find presents for them.”

So, this year, as well as the traditional mince pie, whisky, and carrot for Rudolph, we’ll be setting out something special for Santa too – a Mary’s Meals Santa plate gift.

For a £10 donation – enough to provide 100 meals for hungry children in school – we have a beautiful card for the kids to decorate and leave out for Santa on Christmas Eve. It will be a lovely, meaningful addition to our Christmas Eve traditions, giving us the chance to talk about how not all families are as fortunate as ours, and how we can help by leaving our gift for Santa to deliver to hungry children around the world.

And, with Double The Love, our donation will be doubled – meaning our Santa plate will provide 200 meals for hungry children!

Our gift will help more children like Brendah’s daughter, Kelcy, dream of a better future.

One of four children, Kelcy is a student at Zhakata Primary in Zimbabwe’s rural Murehwa District. The region has been hit hard by drought, leaving families with little to eat. Every day, 11-year-old Kelcy walks an hour to school, often arriving in class on an empty stomach. Before school meals arrived at Zhakata, she struggled to find motivation.

She says: “It was very difficult coming to school, walking one hour knowing that there’s no food here and then you would have left home without eating anything, so you just be at school, drowsy, tired, feeling like sleeping, so the concentration would be disrupted in class.”

Kelcy is one of 472 children at Zhakata Primary who receive a hot mug of porridge every day, served by Mary’s Meals in partnership with Mavambo Orphan Care. The porridge gives the children energy to actively participate in class, but also provides mothers, like Brendah, with a sense of relief. She says: “Now, you see a bright face. Before, Kelcy would be hungry, her face would be not so happy.

“I know she will be catered for, she will eat at school and she will come back home smiling because she will be full.”

This year, Kelcy and Brendah won’t have the festive celebration millions of families around the world will get to enjoy. But with Mary’s Meals’ long-term commitment at Zhakata Primary, there's hope for the future. Speaking about what she wants to be when she is older, Kelcy says: “I want to be a lawyer.”

When she wakes up each school day, the prospect of porridge will continue to attract Kelcy into class where she can gain an education, providing a ladder that will one day lift her and her family out of poverty.

That’s why, this Christmas, our family is giving a gift of hope with our Mary’s Meals Santa plate. Because we will be lucky enough to experience the joy of filled stockings and smiles on Christmas morning – but there is so much joy in giving too. And with our special gift for Santa, we are looking forward to sharing that joy with our children this Christmas.

This Christmas, with Double The Love, donations to Mary’s Meals – including our Santa plate gift card – will be matched up to £1.1 million, thanks to a generous group of donors. The gift matching will end when the £1.1 million total is reached so don’t delay, order your Santa plate gift card today! The last postage date for our gift cards is Thursday, 18 December.